more Luang Probang

3/20/2011
-Met my freinds from Washington for breakfast Crepes.
-Took a walk to Phosy (pronounced "pussy") looking for replacement shoes, mine are completely coming apart, no luck on the shoe front, but bought a carton of cigarettes for 20,000 kip (thats 25 cents a pack), and a massive bag of peanuts.
-Stopped on the way back at the Kaysone (the leader of the communists in Lao) Memorial, which had remarkable views of the Mekong.
-Beautiful sunset:

-Had dinner on the Mekong with Clayanne and Colin then went to Utopia where i met up with another freind from Cali and chilled there til sunset.
3/21/2011
-woke up feeling like shit. Another damn cold.
-spent a while on the interwebs, drank some tea, ate some sudafed.
-went out to eat some soup, trying to feel better.
-felt a little better so down to the river, where these three crazy kids from Vermont were building a boat, Hounde, to sail down the Mekong, hung out with them on the river for a bit, then sat at the guest house with a lot of folks drinking beers and eating rice cakes and peanuts.
-Then to Utopia with the Hounde crew and Oren, where we met up with American girls, and two great french guys.
-When they gave us the boot at 11:30, went to a local bar that stayed open later, Yen Sabai, then to the bank of the river where the boys had a fire pit, so we built a fire and stayed up late with a whole lot of people drinking and talking shit, i went to bed at 4 AM and i think people were down there til almost 5. fun night.
3/22/2011
-woke up late, still feeling shitty, walked into town to sit on the river and have my morning caffeine and cigarette.
-after this walked down a bit and wound up running into the same San Fran folks from Tat Lo, Psyched to see them, we sat and talked for a while and made plans to go to the waterfall the next day.
-ate some lunch, then met up with Colin and Clay Anne, had dinner with them, then down to the night market where i recorded a street musician playing the Erhu.
-back to Utopia

Luang Probang

3/18/2011
-woke up late, catching up on sleep. had a banana pancake and tea at the guest house.
-walked around town, trying to get my bearings, the usual, whenever i get to a new place spend the first day walking around figuring out the lay of the land.
-Walked up to the huge gold stupa on the hill in the center of town:

-heard over amplified chanting in the distance coming off the river.
-followed the sound over the old soviet bridge that goes over the Nam Khong, and into a sort of residential area, wound up at a Wat at the elbow of the river on the far side from the old town. they had a huge PA set up with air-raid style speakers, and a single monk was chanting into a microphone, surrounded by people paying their respects and the metal trees hung with offerings. i made a sizable donation and asked for permission to record. they said it was ok, so i set up, unfortunately there was a dog in the temple that hated white people, standing next to me and barking, sort of ruined my first recording. went outside the walls a bit, and recorded off the PA speakers. I watched the same dog bark at every Falong that came through. spent maybe a half hour recording, and amassed a small army of curious children, hard to keep them quiet, you can hear them in some of the recordings.
-spent a while there, then wandered back into town.
-went to the night market, they shut down a main street everynight and there are tons of vendors selling handicrafts, bought a nice shoulderbag for $2.
-Ate a big dinner, called it a night early.
3/19/2011
-went for another walk around town but took the camera instead of the recorder, took some pictures:

-wandered around, saw three kids run up to a tree with a big bamboo pole, and excitedly pull a huge milky white spider out of the tree, which they grabbed with their hands.
-there was a young german watching this spectacle as well, went for a beer with him, he'd been studying abroad in Thailand, and was visiting Lao before heading back to Germany.
-wandered around some more, wound up stumbling upon an Erhu player at the night market, sat and watched for a while, but unfortunately didn't have the recorder.
-went to this place called Utopia for dinner, truly a Utopic spot, watched the moon rise from a huge bamboo deck over the Nam Khong. 

-went to another bar, Hive, where unbeknownest to me they were having an "Ethnik" Fashion show, which was super weird, a lot of Lao girls in traditional garb walking the runway. That was followed by a group of Lao B-Boys doing a breakdancing show which was pretty fun, reunited with the american girls there, and met an awesome dude from cali, Oren.
-Hive sort of cleared out, so we returned to utopia, had a nice time, got a hookah. The girls had taken to much Valium, and the drinks on top didn't help, one girl wound up disappearing, and around closing time we found her passed out on the floor of the bathroom.
-The bars here close at 11:30, police enforced curfew, so the girl that had passed out in the bathroom went back the guest house, but the rest of us went down and chilled on the river.
more to come...

Very Inflammable Persons

3/16/2011
-Spent most of the day sitting at a cafe in deep conversation with Alex, wandered around the city a bit and had some deliciousdollar duck noodle soup for dinner. parted ways with Alex
-caught a Tuk-Tuk to the bus station at 7, bus left at eight. it was rainy and cold outside for most of the ride, the seats were pretty comfortable, but i was definitely missing my sleeper bus. sat next to an 18 year old American girl who was travelling with three friends and a puppy that they had adopted on the road.
stopped at about one AM for a snack, the food was free, but i didn't have any because i was already struggling to fall asleep and figured food wouldn't help.
-then back on the bus, headed up into the mountains.
-at about three AM on an empty stretch of mountain road the bus came to a sudden stop and started smoking profusely from the engine. people started yelling about a fire, and there was a panicked crush for the door, luckly we were sitting in front, so it just took some shoving to get out, Cami, the American girl, got punched in the head. Her freinds and puppy were sitting in the back over the flaming engine, and were passed out cold when the fire started. Left their shoes, bags and the puppy on the bus. when we evactuated the bus it was pouring rain and frigid cold. luckly i had a raincoat and a flashlight in my bag, i was still freezing, but at least not soaked. we had to hike up the road to get away from the cloud of noxious smoke. Took about 20 minutes to put out the fire which had tendrils reaching over the top of the bus. they were pouring water on it, which probably didn't help the situation. but eventually it went out. we went into the bus to try and find these poor girls bags, shoes and pup, rescued the bags and the shoes but no sign of the tiny pup. also opened the roof hatches to ventilate the smoke. finally the pup turned up wandering the street around the bus and crying pathetically. after hanging out in the rain waiting for the smoke to clear, people started to filter back into the bus. most immediately fell asleep, which was sort of a surprise to me, i didn't sleep until the next morning, and then only for an hour.
3/17/2011
-treated to a beautiful sunrise over a remarkable mountainous rainforest, from inside the burnt out bus, also treated to a terrible headache from whatever terrible burnt plastics and shit i had been inhaling in the bus all night.
-had to wait until noon for another bus to pick us up. then still had a five hour ride to Luang Probang. which took even longer because about 20 K out of town the road had turned into a total mudpit and we had to wait for the traffic ahead of us to be extracted from the mud.
-then while our bus was slogging along, a rock busted the brake fluid tank, so the bus came to a stop again and let out some smoke, everybody on the bus, frazzled by the previous bus fire immediately started to evacuate. but we were so close they just topped off the fluid and continued on. didn't make it to Luang Probang til about 7 PM been awake for over 36 hours, with maybe one hour of sleep. Luckly managed to find a cheap nice guest house quickly. Ate some food at the guest house and passed out pretty early.
-what was supposed to be a 8-9 hour bus ride turned out to be 23 hours, the average speed of travel was 15.3 Km/h
Pictures and such from the lovely town of Luang Probang soon.

3/14-3/15

3/14/2011
-Morning tea, then to immigration office, played the window bouncing game, and filled out some forms that made no sense completely wrong. they try to squeeze every last dime out of you at the office costs a couple thousand for the form, more for them to make a copy of your passport etc. finally got shit sorted and went to pay, they wanted $40 US but i didn't have dollars only Kip and the exchange rate was 10,000 to one for some damn reason, even though gov't propagandha is all about using kip over dollars, but the gov't itself punishes you for using Kip explain that shit to me...
-they held onto my passport at the immigration office, so had a bit of trouble getting into the American embassy, but eventually they let me in and i turned in the forms and paid the money to get my passport replaced, had to go back the next day once i picked up my passport, so they could copy it, ah the joys of bureaucracy.
-wandered around for a bit, hung out by a massive bronze sculpture on the mekong, behind the presidential palace, there were a shitload of exercise machines set up in the park as well, just in the view of the palace and nowhere else.
-back to the beer garden where i met a lovely couple from Washington, talked to them for a while, and went to dinner together, had two dollar duck noodle soup which was excellent.
-they went to bed and i went to wander around a bit before going to bed.
3/15/2011
-next morning went to have my morning tea and do internet stuff, and there was a kid with a big black eye and lots of cuts, he had the look that people get when they really want to tell a story, so i invited him to sit with me, and he laid quite a tale on me. he was a wounded Iraq war vet on the tail end of a nine month trip across Asia. Really a cool kid, from a rural poor family in TN, his journey was coming to an abrupt end due to a fiasco on the Slow Boat to Luang Probang. In the chaos of the offload and people trying to sell accomidation, he noticed a girl get offered a room for 160,000  LAK, while he was offered the same room by the same guy for 30,000 LAK, so he tried to get the guy to give the girl a fair price. things escalated, and wound up with the guest house guy throwing a punch. which turned into a brawl, where this kid came out on top in a serious way. guesthouse dude left, but returned a short time later with his brother and two other friends on motorbikes, armed with big sticks. he broke his guitar over the face of the first dude, which incapacitated him, and left him with no weapon but only three attackers. as one might imagine, they preceded to fuck him up pretty bad, broken foot, fat scabbed bitemarks on his back, pitch black eye, and an untold number of scrapes and bruises. he only escaped by jumping in the mekong and swimming to the other side. where he waited to die, until a south american guy he had befriended on the boat, chartered a small boat to go pick him up. spent the next night in jail, for fear that if he was out and about he would actually be killed. the next morning had a meeting with the police, the original assailant and brother. speaking no Lao, of course this meeting did not go in his favor. his choice ultimately came down to $250 or six months in Lao jail. Unfortunately, did not have $250 readily available, so it was looking like he was going to serve time and his injuries were going to go untreated. luckly, the same South American guy showed up to try and get him out, because the boat was leaving, and paid to free him. when i met him he was killing time before taking a plane back to the states. crazy.
-talked until about 1:30, then went off to get my passport and go back to the American Embassy, pretty easy, extension was sorted and passport stuff sorted.
-back to the hotel, ran into an Irish guy, Alex, who was just getting settled and had quite an impressive beard. spent the next two days hanging out with him. Impressive character all round, had a deep interest and skill at picking up language, deep insight into the world, well educated, a remarkable writer, and was on a bicycle journey around Asia.
-sat on the banks of the Mekong and had a drink with him, talked all sorts of things, then went to find dinner, we were both interested in getting out of the tourist district and finding some real Lao food, so we wandered for a while, conversation flowing like water, until we found a Falong free establishment well off the track, had some excellent beef hotpot, but realized part way through we were doing it all wrong.... no matter, was still delicious.
-spent the rest of the night on the balcony sharing music, really a wonderful treat.

dinnertime here, more soon

more from Vientiane

3/11/11
-forgot to include my hospital adventure, all the days blend together and i rarely know what the date is, not to mention what date i did things in the past, anyways, i was having ear troubles, couldn't hear fully out of my right ear, i was pretty sure the problem was just impacted earwax, so i went to the Lao hospital to get it dealt with, went into the ER and they sent me to what i guess was the ear doctor's wing, in a different building and upstairs, when i went up it was seemingly empty until i found a nurse sleeping in a room, i woke her up as nicely as possible and mimed the problem. she phoned the doctor, who had just dipped out (i guess), and he came with the head nurse who spoke a tiny bit of english. i explained the problem, and he started rooting around in my ear with big picks and a little suction vaccum thing. it was pretty painful, but he pulled a big wad of black shit out of my ears with assorted steel picks, and suddenly (30 mins later) i could hear fully out of my right ear. which made me realize i am not hearing fully out of my left ear. walked down by the nurse to pay, wound up costing 170,000 kip or slightly more than $20
3/12/11
-tried to go to the immigration office to extend the ol' visa, but forgot that it was saturday, so was of course sent away.
-walked down the street to the Lao Arc de Triumphe, which was built from concrete donated by the Americans to build a runway during the Secret War. some quality signage:

 hey you! no passing a grass!

-wandered around some more, not much exciting, saw all the gov't offices
-Went to the Lao national Museum, that was interesting, a lot of weaponry and pictures of the "American imperialists" and their "puppets" also a supprising amount of ancient "tobacco" pipes, i think using tobacco in the same sense headshops in the states call bongs tobacco pipes. some incredible old buddhist relics and an extensive section on the various gov't offices and what they are currently doing.
-headed to dinner, there were huge fireworks on the Thai side of the Mekong, not sure why. had dinner at a weird bar/restaurant, five stories up overlooking the mekong, populated about half and half Falong to Lao. ordered dinner and Beer Lao Gold, which was in no way different then regular Beer Lao, except slightly more expensive. Had a weird weird conversation with the people sitting across from me, they were three laotians, with not much in the way of english, a girl who was apparently celebrating her birthday, who told me she had a husband from england, a man around her age and an older woman who spoke no english. I think she (the older one) was trying to sleep with me, there was lots of suggestive gesturing, they kept suggesting that i come out dancing and poured me tons of beer. lots of toasts later i was drunker then i wanted to be and bid them goodnight and went to bed.  
3/13/11
-after my morning tea, went to a Wat known for its hundreds of unique buddhas stored in specially made alcoves all through out the inner sanctuary. very impressive, especially the inner room you're not allowed to photograph, about 25 ft walls with 14 foot wraparound murals done in the 1800s, and more alcoves where another large grouping of two-by-two buddha's sit. lots of pictures:

-wandered around to two more Wats, no pictures but saw lots of incredible architecture, murals, Stupas, wood carvings and sculptures.
-went to dinner at this wonderful indian/malay restaurant on the river and main road, i had been to a few nights before. got a delicious dinner, but while i was eating there was an awful motorcycle crash involving two teenagers. they were both going pretty fast, with no helmets and collided front to front. Both were out for a minute, while everybody around gathered, it was crazy to watch the sudden appearance of hundreds of people on the street, gathered around the crash, people rushed to help, pulling both kids from under their bikes. One kid was passed out cold, a group of other teenagers shook him vigorously after extracting him from the bike, and dragged his still unconscious body somewhere up on the river walk after a good deal of shakings. the other accidentee was conscious but struggling to walk, bleeding from his leg, and holding his shoulder, he was supported off by a middle aged falong and a few twenty something Lao, presumably to go to the hospital.
-The bikes remained where they had fallen surrounded by maybe 40 people, traffic started moving and just skirted the motorbikes which took up a good third of the two lane road. although the right and left lane could not both fit on the road, there was surprisingly little honking or anger. the police showed up maybe 30 minutes later, interviewed one witness, measured the distance across the road and the distance of the motorbikes from the curb, spray painted around the bikes and left.
-beer garden then balcony time...
more soon, have wifi in the current guest house.

Vientiane

-Forgot one note from Tat Lo, when i was walking back to the room one evening, there was a cluster of kids the oldest probably 15 giving themselves remarkable tattoos with a home made needle. I spent almost an hour watching this, some of the work was incredible, geometric designs, and the oldest kid was giving himself a chest piece, with two beautiful dragons, they offered to give me one, i was tempted but they were sharing the needle and dipping it in the river water.
3/10/11
-Arrived in Vientiane at 6:30 AM, took a shared Tuk-tuk to the center, most of the guest houses were either full or absurdly expensive, wound up finding a sort of dumpy room with my own bathroom for 60,000 not bad.
-left my shit and went to have a tea.
-took a walk around town, weird scene, lots of pricey western restaurants and cafes, and tons of Vang Vieng tubing shirts on euro clubber looking folks.
-went to the American embassy to deal with replacing my passport, very odd place, massive walls around the whole complex and a major road running in between, that was essentially closed to the the Lao people. the complex was right off and overlooking the black Stupa a beautiful and ancient crumbling stupa. couldn't go in because they only dealt with citizen affairs from 1-4, so wandered around until it was time to go back.
-Interspersed with the gov't buildings and western style cafes in Vientiane were beautiful monastaries.
-Back to the embassy, got the forms for the passport replacement, oddly, it costs $110 to get a whole new passport, but to get pages added to an existing passport, its $85 per page, explain that one to me...
-ate some wonderful Duck Lap (Lao meat salad, finely sliced duck served on a bed of spices and lightly cooked, traditionally the meat is served raw, but they cook it for falongs) for dinner, and hung out on the balcony.
3/11/11
-After breakfast wandered some more, walked through some beautiful monastaries, apparently the proliferation of monastaries here serves the population in the sense that rather then compulsory military service most kids spend 2-3 years in monastical service when they reach a certain age, which probably contributes to the wonderful chill energy of most people here.
-some pictures from various Wats:

 Huge beehive on the building, there were women selling fresh honey from the hive.

-spent a while at a different Wat then the one pictured watching stone carvers working on beautiful Filigree window covers.
-dinner, then balcony chilling, was interupted by an middle aged austrialian man with a deaf girl who couldn't have been more then 15 years old. He complained about all the sex tourism, then proceeded to take the deaf girl to bed. hard thing to deal with.


More soon, in Luang Probang now, want to go explore the city.

a few more pics from Tat Lo

Dunno if this is true or not, but signs never lie, especially in Socialist countries

mmm

Quite proud of this home made ashtray, notice the cig rest, high luxury.

Tat Lo

3/6/2011
-Not much else to do in Champasak, so made plans to leave the next day, heard that the bus was 20,000 which is cheap, but turned out not to be a bus at all but rather a sanganathaw, which is essentially a van, with the back chopped off to be a pick up truck fillled with bench seats and crammed with people, maybe 35 people crammed in the back, it was an uncomfortable ride, and chicken blood kept splashing out of the bucket under my seat onto my feet. luckly it was a short ride to Pakse, about an hour, where we caught a Tuk-Tuk, the driver was really good and took us directly to the bus to Tat Lo, which we didn't even know existed, we thought we had to book a bus somewhere else and jump off at Tat Lo.
-Andre's pictures of the bus-station:

-the bus station doubled as a market, as they often do, so i bought some of these lovely chinese sunflower seeds i ate a lot in china, bread and beverages for the journey.
-spent a while waiting at the bus station, there were women with little baskets giving pedicures and manicures in the bus station, i considered getting one while i waited, but decided not to...
-bus ride to Tat Lo was painless, relatively nice bus.
-once again, got dropped off on the main road, had a 1K walk to get to the actual town of Tat Lo, luckly though, a Falong with an open backed van came by and gave us a lift to Tat Lo.
-The waterfalls were beautiful, it was a really nice spot, and we found a bungalow right on the water for less then $4:

-waterfall pictures:

-a panorama of sorts from the balcony:

-note in the right hand corner of the last picture the beautiful little monastary right next to the guest house overlooking the falls.
-the first shot of the falls is from where we ate lunch which had a beautiful view and old growth trees full of noisy cicadas.
-walked up to the falls, watched them bathe the elephants in the water, was gonna go swim, but one of the elephants took a massive shit in the water, didn't really feel like swimming in elephant shit.

-spent the rest of the day mellowing on the balcony, watching the scenery.

3/7/2011

-slept in, the bed was one of the most comfortable i've had, by which i mean to say the matress was not a piece of plywood, and the pillows were not bricks, after breakfast with Andre went for a swim in the waterfall, we had planned to hike to the big falls, but were both feeling lazy.

-hung out on the balcony and listened to music, were visited by some very pushy Lao girls who insisted on sitting on our laps and taking over everything we had sitting out, spent forever doing nothing on my computer and taking pictures with Andre's phone

-then went for a walk to the other side of town, through the monastary, they were preparing for a big wedding celebration, watched them slit the throat of a pig, and proceed to butcher it, Tat Lo is a pretty tiny town, it was about a five minute walk before we were out of the town and in burned fields. 

-on the way back Andre snapped a picture of some cycling monks:

-went to the guest house where this American guy i had met in Champasak was staying to have beer and dinner. Met up with him and his wife, which was great, he's travelled pretty extensively and was good freinds with Alan Bishop and Marc, who run Sublime frequencies, he also ran a pretty excellent label out of San Fran. Was great to talk to him about recording and noise music in the states. 

3/8/2011

-After Breakfast Andre and i Set off on a hike to the big waterfall.

-it was about an hour walk 10K on shadeless roads. 

-Unfortunately when we arrived the waterfall was dry, apparently there's a big hydro-electric dam somewhere along the line, so no water in the dry season, which is unfortunate, because it was a massive rock face, that would be remarkable with water coming over it. 

-there was however a nice village, spent a bit of time there with a tail of local kids, and sat at a local spot and had a beer before walking back. 

-more balcony chilling. 

-this really nice spanish girl, who was staying in the bungalow next to mine, and had been there for weeks (they had built a little firepit and were cooking their own dinners) brought me half of a delicious watermelon, which was a really nice treat. 

-dinner and balcony beers.

3/9/2011

-hired a motorbike to take me to the main road to catch the local bus back to Pakse, where i was going to catch a sleeper bus to Vientiane

-Arrived in Pakse, and had a Tuk Tuk take me straight to the "VIP" bus station. got to the station around 3:30, bought a ticket for a sleeper bus leaving at 8:00. 

-wasn't anywhere safe to leave my bags, so stuck close to the bus station, which was ok, because as usual there was a market, and around 5 tons of food vendors set up at the station. 

-bought some peanuts and water, sat outside watching the chaotic activity, had a nice chat with a Lao man who worked in the Gov't in Vientiene.

-Delicious dinner of perfect fresh chicken drumsticks cooked on a stick over an open grill and sticky rice, one of the better meals i've had. 

-Boarded the bus, which was quite nice, the sleeper busses in Lao are different then everywhere else, usually they cram in three or four rows of single person, very short chaise lounge style beds, but the lao buses are two rows of fairly large beds, supposed to be shared by two people, i wasn't looking forward to sharing with a stranger, but luckly for me no one wanted to share with the stinky Falong. so i had a bed to myself, and on top of that, i could almost stretch my legs out fully, an unheard of luxury on an Asian sleeper bus.

-needless to say, slept well.

Vientiane update soon

more photos from Vat Phou Champasak (in no particular order)

more Lao

3/3/2011
-Parted ways with Patricia, and rented bikes again after breakfast, rode to Dome Det, the Fins wanted to see the town and the beach, they were looking to get a suntan, and i was looking forward to more swimming.
-swam for a while, and watched the Euro partiers do their silly thing, including a dude who was too drunk to say on his tube, got caught by the current and wound up stuck in a tree on the other side of the Mekong. funny to watch.
-the swimming instigated ear problems which i'm still dealing with, i can't hear fully out of my right ear, and can't find hydrogen peroxide anywhere.
-spent the day lounging on the beach, pretty nice.
-then rode back to Dome Khone, booked bus tickets to Champasak the next day.
-early same same dinner, beers on the balcony and early to bed.
3/4/2011
-boat to the mainland, then bus to champasak, which was actually the bus to Pakse, but dropped me and this German guy Andre off at a corner, of the main road and a dirt track that led to the boat landing to go to Champasak, nothing there but a lady selling dead squirrels and partially dead rats stuffed in a cage. Had to hire motorbikes to take us, then two long boats joined together by deckwork to cross the river. Champasak sprawls along a single road, and the only attraction is Vat Phou Champasak, an ancient Khemer hindu temple adapted to be buddhist.
-picked up from the boat landing by a jovial lao guy who ran a nice guest house who took us there by Tuk Tuk.
-wandered around champasak, but really nothing to see, some buddhist temples and guys drinking and playing petanque.
-had dinner at a sprawling empty restaurant on the river by myself, the owner was very talkative, he was renting the place from the gov't
-hung out at the guest house with Andre.
3/5/2011
-Rented bicycles to go to Vat Phou, long ride, but the road side was dotted with massive sculptures of buddha wrapped in tree roots:

-it was a long ride to Vat Phou, then lots of stair climbing, i have a shitload of pictures but the internet is real slow so i'll only put up a few so you get the idea.

-just a taste, there's so much there, incredible old stone carvings and whatnot.


more to come, waterfall photos, and much more.